Huckabee shameful record

Huckabee’s ongoing abuse of taxpayer plane

199 Comments

Frequent flier

Max
Brantley Updated:
2/16/2006

The
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Seth Blomeley wrote a lengthy report in Sunday’s
newspaper on Gov. Mike Huckabee’s heavy use of the State Police airplane for travels that have
often included stops that enhance his national political profile.

The
article added details to Warwick Sabin’s earlier reporting in the Times on the
use of the twin-engine King Air. According to the D-G account, the governor has racked up
nearly a half-million bucks in private plane costs since 2002 alone. He could have saved plenty flying commercial or
taking a car in-state.

Sabin
had reported earlier on reporting by a South Dakota newspaper that found few
governors with the unfettered access to state-funded air transport that Huckabee enjoys. The D-G
reported that Republican governors in Texas and Missouri rarely use a state
plane, preferring not to charge taxpayers. Other governors who use state planes
maintain detailed public records.

The legislature seems to have no
problem with treating Huckabee like a corporate exec, with unlimited use of a
private plane to go
along with a mansion, free utilities, servants, a vehicle fleet and other
freebies.

We
aren’t so sanguine. Should taxpayers be paying to fly the governor to
Republican meetings and Christian Coalition confabs? Worse still are many flights to Nashville,
Ark., which suspiciously suggest he uses the plane (and, in one case, a state helicopter) to get to his
Lake Greeson house on weekends. This is “official business”?

We’d settle for accountability, a
concept that makes The Huckster churlish.

He
would take no questions from the Democrat-Gazette, saying, through a spokesman,
that its reporter and political editor have “edited, twisted and
distorted” his remarks. He won’t talk to us either. He simply doesn’t do
interviews with people
who ask tough questions, follow them up and refuse to be snookered by a corny
joke and a sound bite. He’ll talk on TV
and radio, where he controls the message.

So
this is for the TV reporters, should you get a chance. What security interest
demands private plane travel for Huckabee (and his family) rather than a cheaper
Southwest Airlines flight to Washington? Why was he choppered to Lake Greeson? Why, in fact, can’t he drive himself to
his weekend retreat?

Then
there’s accountability. State employees must justify every single mile for
which they are reimbursed. Why should it be any different for The Huckster. If
he cranks up the State Police plane, taxpayers are entitled to know the times, dates, destinations and passengers. “Official
business” is not sufficient documentation.

Sen.
Dave Bisbee, a Rogers Republican, put it squarely to Reporter Blomeley, as Bisbee
often does. “Where do you draw the line between campaign and official business? The questions
shouldn’t be whether Huckabee is benefiting. The question should be whether the state is
benefiting. The governor ought to be able to answer those questions.”

Huckabee
won’t answer those questions because he can’t. And the answers might prove a
problem in his 2008 presidential
campaign.

Bill
Clinton didn’t have to answer questions about the State Police plane when he
ran in 1992 because there was no state King Air then. Clinton’s questions concerned the
free rides he bummed on corporate aircraft, duly reported in his financial disclosure forms.
Amazing, isn’t it, that no similar accountability is required when the governor
uses OUR airplane.

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